


With Illumination and Forgiveness

by DoreyG, DoreyS (DoreyG)



Category: Babylon 5
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Past Attempted Murder, Past major character injury, Pre-Relationship, Season/Series 04, Seeing Color 2016, Support
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-12
Updated: 2016-08-12
Packaged: 2018-08-08 08:38:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7750798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoreyG/pseuds/DoreyG, https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoreyG/pseuds/DoreyS
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He still feels where he got stabbed, sometimes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With Illumination and Forgiveness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TwoMenAndAGuava (drakkynfyre47)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/drakkynfyre47/gifts).



He still feels where he got stabbed, sometimes.

It’s not a regular thing. Usually he’s too distracted by his job, or by the shadows or by the slowly simmering problems with earth or by the personal problems of literally all the command staff, to pay much mind to what happened to him. But... Sometimes, sometimes the memories will linger. He’ll wake up in the middle of the night to a phantom pain across his abdomen, he’ll be sitting innocently eating his dinner and will drop his fork at a sudden stab of agony through his stomach, he’ll even be standing in the medical centre making notes and will end up spinning around because he thinks he sees the reflection of one of the men who attacked him in a medical cabinet.

...Or he’ll end up innocently walking down a perfectly average character one day, fingers tapping absently on the front of his uniform like he can feel the slight scarring even through the heavy fabric.

It’s not a big thing, really. Even when the memories do linger, even when he does get distracted. He knows it’s not exactly healthy, he even knows that he’d be mildly concerned if he was sitting across from a patient displaying the exact same symptoms, but he’s fine. He survived, he recovered well, he didn’t fall back on his stims habit and he’s _strong_. He has to be. He’s always been a light sleeper anyway, is perfectly in the habit of getting up when he feels the phantom pain and going to do something else. He knows food is important enough to ignore any lingering psychosomatic agony, is fine with just picking his fork back up and carrying on with his meal. And he startles at even the thought of one of his attackers finding him again, yes, but he can also take a deep breath and get happily back to making his notes a second afterwards.

“Hey, are you alright?” ...He’d even have forgotten his attempt to feel the scarring quickly enough, would’ve got back to his quarters and immersed himself happily in more worthy pursuits, if Marcus hadn’t run up the corridor behind him with such helplessly concerned wide eyes before he could.

“Of course,” he tugs his hand away from the front of his uniform, forces a smile. Luckily, he doesn’t have to force much. Marcus may be annoying, on numerous occasions, but he’s still charming and funny and compassionate enough to put even some of his doctors to shame at times. Not to mention, incredibly easy on the eye, “just got off shift, so I’m a little tired but otherwise good.”

Marcus only frowns at him, looking thoughtful. He has an incredibly pretty frown, the thought of it has kept him warm on more nights than he’d like to admit.

“What about you?” He asks, trying to force a teasing note into his voice. Trying to distract himself, more like it, from the double punch of Marcus’ absurdly attractive face and the lingering urge to feel his scar again, “off on more incredibly exciting ranger adventures, I bet. How many impossibly dangerous things have you faced today, I wonder? One, three, more...?”

“Stephen,” Marcus interrupts him hastily, bites his lip for a long few seconds as if he’s only now getting around to thinking things through. It’s disconcerting, at best. As is the suddenly visible concern in his eyes as he gestures slowly, jerkily, towards the front of his uniform, “forgive me for asking, but isn’t that where you were stabbed a few years back?”

He freezes for a long second, the air solidifying in his lungs at the sheer shock of somebody just coming out and _saying_ it.

...He forces past it in the next, though, because he is a doctor and a decent human being and generally tries his very hardest not to respond like a jerk to people asking reasonable questions. Smiles a probably thin smile into Marcus’ face, and sets off at a fast trot that has managed to shake off several uncooperative family members while he’s still distracted by it, “you still haven’t answered _my_ question.”

“Alright, then. It was two, to be exact,” but Marcus is not the uncooperative family member of a patient, and nor can he be left behind so easily. He catches up in a few long strides, still looking so worried with those wide eyes and that distractingly attractive frown firmly in place, “now will you answer mine, or are you just going to keep marching sulkily along?”

“I am not-!” He scowls briefly as he turns to Marcus, begrudgingly lets up his pace just a little, “you knew that would provoke me.”

“I deny nothing,” Marcus says, sounding perfectly innocent... Even as he continues to frown, “Stephen-“

“I don’t like to talk about it,” he sighs through his nose, finally relents as Marcus’ eyes somehow manage to widen even further. How the man can manage to look so much like a kicked puppy is a mystery for the ages, one that even Delenn is probably at a loss over, “but, yes. It is exactly where I was stabbed. Right in the gut, a wound that would’ve certainly killed me a hundred years ago and almost killed me even a few years back.”

“I’m glad it didn’t,” Marcus says quickly, perfectly sincerely. And that’s just another reason that it’s impossible to take against the guy for long, he’s so focusedly earnest that it can’t help but be charming, “so, why-?”

“Don’t I like to talk about the time I was almost murdered in down below, and barely avoided rotting unnoticed in a dark corner for all eternity?” He asks, a slightly bitter smile gracing his face. It’s not fair to Marcus, of course, but... He just finds it hard to help it, sometimes, “I could ask you to guess, but that would probably be rude.”

“Not to mention not a very fun game,” Marcus waves him off, eyes gone dark with something close to... Anguish? Surely too dramatic a word, for a simple doctor like him, “I don’t like games that aren’t fun, you may have noticed.”

“At least a little,” he snorts, shakes his head. Admits, if just to himself, that it feels good to get this off his chest for the first time in ages. Especially to someone like Marcus, hovering there with such concern and yet such respect all mixed in with each other “...It’s not a portion of my life that I’m particularly proud of.”

Marcus remains mercifully silent, waiting him out.

“All my life I’ve worked to make things better for others, to improve their lives and maybe improve the world around me a little as a result. It seemed so easy for a while, so simple...” He swallows, looks down at his shoes. They’re almost at his quarters, but have slowed down so much that they may not arrive there for hours yet, “but I slipped, just briefly. And then I was addicted to drugs, and then I was addicted to running away from my problems, and then I was lying against a filthy wall in down below bleeding out due to getting stabbed in the gut.”

“Stephen...” Marcus starts softly, hesitates for a long second before reaching out to comfortingly grip his arm.

“It terrifies me, to think about how quickly it happened,” he accepts the grip, only slightly surprised by how much he needs it. It makes sense, after all, he’s been standing alone for so long that he was basically primed to grasp at the first support given, “but... It terrifies me more, to think that it could happen all over again. That I could slip one more time, and end up right back where I started. I’m so tired sometimes, and the war keeps going on and on. And I look at the stims, just lying around medlab, and sometimes I think- it would be so easy to just start taking them again, Marcus. So easy to just pick them up, and flow right into that world all over again.”

Marcus remains quiet for a long few moments, eyes still fixed intensely on him. And he allows himself, just for those long few moments, to fear... “I understand.”

Ridiculous, of course. But he still finds himself helpless before the surge of relief he feels, “you do?”

“It’s not like this is some sort of show, where you get a very special episode and everything is absolutely fine the next day,” Marcus grins at him, still keeps squeezing his arm so supportively that he half feels like weeping, “no, it’s your life and you can’t just recover from stuff like that in the blink of an eye.”

“As much as I wish I could.”

“Obviously,” Marcus remains silent for a long moment, looking surprisingly thoughtful over the dilemma, “But... If it helps, at all, I don’t think that you’re going to relapse. Not now, not ever.”

“Such optimism,” he tries to tease, somewhat hampered by the fact that his throat is still tight, “but do you have anything to back it in reality?”

“Yes,” Marcus answers, so fierce that it actually surprises him. Sends a flicker of warmth right through his gut, erasing any lingering pain, and up into his chest, “I have all of your friends, and all of your family, and _me_. All of us are here for you, Stephen, and all of us want you to succeed even more than you do. We’re not going to let you fail, _I’m_ not going to let you fail as long as there’s breath in my body.”

He stares for a second, so overcome that he swears there are actually tears prickling around the edges of his eyes.

“...Marcus,” but he smiles too, lays his own hand over where Marcus is gripping his arm and urges them back into a far happier walk. Towards the future, and whatever it may hold, “thank you. Now, would you like to join me for dinner tonight? I can’t offer much, but one of the new doctors shared a curry recipe with me and I’ve been dying to try it out.”

The threatening tears fade, eventually, on the walk back. He still doesn’t remove his hand from where it rests over Marcus’.


End file.
